


Slow Awakening

by Red_Tigress



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Tigress/pseuds/Red_Tigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For FN-2187, awareness was gradual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Awakening

For FN-2187, the change was gradual.

He was standing still in the hallway, the soft thrum of machinery echoing all around him. He leaned forward slowly, placing his gloves hand against the wall. It was warm, vibrating slightly with the millions of miles of machinery just like it to back it up. He had never... _felt_ it before.

“No one else has anything like this,” he said out loud to Slip, who was standing nearby. He paused. It had just...slipped out, a thought not fully formed. It had appeared and disappeared as quickly as a breath misting in front of his face.

“Like what, a hose?” Slip laughed, hoisting the heavy rubber hose over his shoulder. “Hate to spoil the surprise, but there’s twenty more sanitation units, just in this hemisphere, in the base.”

“No, I mean…” FN-2187 trailed off. He pulled back his hand as if burned. He suddenly didn’t want to touch it. He looked around him at the cold, steel walls, their metal polished to perfection. Their pristine floors, the distant sound of another squadron’s footsteps clacking smartly off of them. Lights blinking slowly and steadily in a language all their own.

It was like he was seeing it all for the first time.

For the first time, he felt it. What they were standing on. The enormity of it. The weight of that much power was suddenly crushing his chest and then-

-The feeling was gone.

The floor was just a floor again. Lights were lights.

FN-2187 stared at his feet.

“87? You good?”

He blinked at Slip’s voice. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

 

The alarm blared once, indicating the range was live. FN-2187 raised his blaster like he had thousands of time before. Like thousands of times before, he aimed at the distinctly human-shaped target in front of him. Detachment and calm settled over him as he pulled the trigger.

The target in front of him was suddenly a man, alive and breathing.

“KRIFF!” FN-2187 flinched violently, lowering his blaster.

He looked again, but the target was just a target, black and still and silent. He tentatively raised his blaster and aimed it again.

Unbidden, his thoughts wandered back to that morning. They had been given the yellow pills with their breakfast. They had to take them every now and again. Usually before…

Target practice.

He looked up again, but there was only the human-shaped board, standing stiffly thirty feet away. It was still silent.

The soft clack of boots sounded behind him followed immediately by a voice that simultaneously oozed disinterest and disgust. “Problem, FN-2187?” Captain Phasma stood behind him and he lowered his blaster.

The sweat was rolling down his back, but he couldn’t explain why. Captain Phasma was intimidating, yes, but his performance had always been exceptional enough he had never been afraid of her. Not like this.

He was glad she couldn’t see his face. “Not feeling well, General. Permission to report to sick bay?”

She tilted her head slightly to show she was considering before she nodded. “Permission granted.”

He holstered his blaster and quickly moved past her.

He went to target practice two days later with no further incident. He barely even remembered it except as a fleeting moment of discomfort.

  


The rattling of utensils in the cantina was always the most prevalent sound when they ate. There was  barely any conversation. Stormtroopers were trained in efficiency, and that extended to meals. Meals were to intake protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins.

It was also one of the few times they were allowed to remove their helmets.

FN-2187 looked up one day, wholly expecting to see troopers shoveling their meals into their mouths.

What he saw were faces.

LN-6598, concerned about her performance in simulations. She’d made a dangerous errors that in the field would have gotten her killed. She was nervous about reconditioning. Freckles stood out on her amber skin like a light speckling of dust. Her natural beauty was offset by the tightening around the corners of her eyes, something set off by stress.

Or DB-3951. A fresh face, a young face, newly moved to the base. He was scared the older troopers would push him around, that he might not be strong enough. His hair was cut short, like all of theirs, but he could see beads of sweat just starting to form under his hairline. Because someone was watching him. FN-2187’s eyes darted to...

VK-5002. She and her squadmate were notoriously cruel, looking to pick out a fresh target to take her anger and frustration out on for not being promoted faster. She was eyeing DB-3951, chewing her protein quickly. Her whole demeanor reminded him of a clawcat, eyeing its prey.

FN-2187 by comparison had stopped eating altogether. He had never cared much before about the faces surrounding him. Suddenly he knew every one, knew every story about it. Took in their features, their scars, their hopes and their fears.

He swallowed nervously.

A bell blared once, snapping him out of his reverie. The clatter of chairs and benches being pushed back washed over him as hundreds of troopers got to their feet. He quickly shoved his biscuit into his mouth and his helmet on his head, faces forgotten under the equalizing white and black.

 

When he had left his helmet on the table next to him for reconditioning, all he could see was Slip’s blood. It was enough to break free. Enough to be able to ignore the images and sounds they tried to push in his head. His mind was suddenly surrounded by a wall, suggestion crashing into it and breaking like a wave on a fortress.

He felt renewed strength surging in and around him, connecting him to his world, making him _aware_ of his world for the first time. It was like he was suddenly seeing in color.

The only reason he didn’t laugh out of sheer joy was because he was also terrified. He had never felt two more opposite emotions roiling within him at the same time.

He was scared.

He was elated.

  
He knew what he had to do.


End file.
